[Mailman-Users] held messages via command line

[Al Black]

Hi gang,

Question about removing held messages via command line.  I'm using
version 2.1.4 on BSD.   

I've been doing some re-administration, or post administration for lack
of a better term, on the machine after being away for a year and a bit. 
I've cleaned away most of the held messages by command line for the
lists using the methods in FAQ 4.74.

However, we've got a whack (i.e., several 1000) held messages for the
list "Mailman".  Both "bin/discard data/heldmsg-<listname>-*"
and "find data -name heldmsg-<listname>-\* -print | xargs bin/discard"
stall when I use them.  Even when I use bin/discard for a single held
message, it stalls.  

Any ideas on how to proceed?  I could rm the bunch, but I don't have a
copy of the empty admin.db copy in (as per the old faq entry).  I
suppose I could hold my nose, but my gut feeling is that this huge
number of held messages is not a good thing... 

al